The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation’s MS Advocate dinner has raised $450,000 to support care and research for multiple sclerosis at OMRF.
OMRF Directors Jim Morris and Burns Hargis announced the total Thursday night during the annual event, which was held at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club. The Chickasaw Nation served as presenting sponsor.
During the dinner, OMRF President Andrew Weyrich, Ph.D., presented the MS Advocate Award to Dr. Robert and Nancy Ellis of Nichols Hills. The Ellises have been instrumental in supporting OMRF’s Multiple Sclerosis Center of Excellence since its opening more than a decade ago.
“In science, you need pioneering donors like the Ellises,” said Dr. Gabriel Pardo, the MS Center’s founding director. “Their generosity makes it possible to improve patient care and advance our understanding of MS.”
Robert Ellis, M.D., is a retired allergist whose support of OMRF dates to the foundation’s roots in the 1940s. With his stepfather, Ray Balyeat, M.D., he worked to raise funds for OMRF’s inaugural capital campaign.
In the years since, personal experience has strengthened the Ellises’ ties to OMRF.
“My daughter, Angela, was diagnosed with MS in the 1990s,” Nancy Ellis said. After struggling initially, she began seeing Pardo, and she’s been a patient at OMRF’s MS Center since it opened in 2011.
“Angela has done wonderfully ever since,” said Nancy Ellis. “Today you’d never know she has MS unless she told you.”
The Ellises made a $1.1 million gift to OMRF in 2023, with a significant portion of the funds designated to the MS Center. “We wanted to do something to help Oklahoma and Oklahoma patients,” said Robert Ellis.
Also at the dinner, OMRF announced a $1.5 million gift for MS care and research from Gail and Rick Muncrief. The gift matches a $1.5 challenge grant made last year by the Stark Family Foundation.
The funds have enabled OMRF to recruit Yang Mao-Draayer, M.D., a physician-scientist who joined OMRF from the University of Michigan this year. Together with Pardo and Chelsea Berkley, M.D., they lead a team at the MS Center that cares for thousands of patients living with MS in Oklahoma and surrounding states.
MS affects nearly 1 million Americans. It occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the insulating layer that protects nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The resulting inflammation can cause vision issues, muscle spasms, tremors and paralysis. In its most common form, the disease includes periods of remission and relapse.
“Our ability to treat MS has improved dramatically, thanks in no small part to new therapies,” Pardo said. “With our donors’ support, we can continue to deliver better patient outcomes and quality of life to people with MS.”
